~Portraits~Generals
and Commanders
by Rebecca Blackwell DrakeExcepts
from In Their Own Words: Soldiers Tell the Story of the Battle of
RaymondBrigadier
General John GreggCommander, Gregg's Brigade

1828-1864

Brigadier General John Gregg
was born in 1828 in Lawrence
County, Alabama. He was a
well-educated man and spent most of his formative years either attending
school or teaching school. In 1847, he graduated from La Grange College
and began to pursue his interest in law. This interest led him to move to
Fairfield, Texas, where he was elected judge of his district in Freestone
County.

In 1858, at the age of thirty,
Gregg returned to Alabama to marry Mary Frances Garth, daughter of Jesse
Winston Garth. Garth was well known as one of the wealthiest plantation
owners in Alabama. He was also a Unionist who was willing to give up his
hundreds of slaves if it meant saving the Union. In 1861, when the war
broke out, Gregg found himself at odds with his father-in-law.

Following the marriage, John
and Mary Gregg returned to Fairfield, Texas, where he was District Judge.
As a member of the Texas Secession Convention, Gregg became a member of
the Provincial Congress of the Southern Confederacy in Montgomery,
Alabama, and later in Richmond, Virginia. As the cause of the Confederacy
escalated, he resigned his congressional seat and formed the 7th Texas
Infantry. John Gregg was ready for action and more than ready to defend
Southern rights and constitutional liberty.

John and Mary Gregg were in
the third year of marriage when he left for war. Soon after enlisting, he
was captured and sent to Fort Warren, Massachusetts, for imprisonment. He
was later exchanged and returned home. In September of 1862, Gregg was
commissioned brigadier general and sent to Mississippi.

One of the first major battles of General
Gregg's military career was in Raymond. The men under his charge were the
3rd, 10th, 30th, 41st and 50th Tennessee Infantries, the 1st Tennessee
Battalion, and the 7th Texas Infantry. On May 12, 1863, when Gregg's
Brigade met McPherson's 17th Corps in Raymond, Gregg fought with a
vengeance. Little did he know that he had led his brigade of 3,000 men
into battle against a force of some 12,000 strong. After almost six hours
of fierce fighting, the Confederates were forced to retreat.

A year later, General John Gregg learned
that General James McPherson, the opposing general in the Battle of
Raymond, had been killed in the Battle of Atlanta. What General Gregg
didn't know was that his destiny would soon be sealed as well.
General John Gregg was killed on October 7, 1864, while fighting in the
Battle of Richmond. The Confederate general had outlived his Union
opponent by only three months.

Both men were born in the same year and, as
fate would have it, both would die in the same year. Mary Garth Gregg
became a widow at the age of thirty-six. After traveling to Virginia to
claim her husband's body, she buried him in Aberdeen, Mississippi.